


Some Creature, Mad With Wrath

by CelticAurora



Category: Underworld (Movies), Van Helsing (2004)
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, F/M, Magic-Users, Revenge, Semi-romantic Relationship, Sex, Slow Burn (kinda), Vampires, Werewolves
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-08
Updated: 2017-12-27
Packaged: 2018-10-29 09:54:41
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 7,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10851570
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CelticAurora/pseuds/CelticAurora
Summary: Two years after Anna's death, Van Helsing is left with little purpose to guide him and little interest beyond trying to get away from what he did to the woman he loved. Carl, his only friend, has now become half friend, half nanny, in order to keep himself from drinking his way into an early grave. He has been sent to Budapest by the Order to flush out a pack of werewolves that has been causing havoc across the city.Selene, meanwhile, has chased lycan twins Vregis and Krandrill across Europe, finding herself back in Budapest and just one step behind the foul beasts, who have only left a trail of devastation in their wake. Desperate to take their lives and repair her bruised reputation, she corners their ragtag pack one night - only to find someone else has beaten her to it.A notorious Death Dealer. An infamous vampire hunter. A pair of werewolves on their tail. And a mysterious woman pulling strings from the shadows.For Van Helsing and Selene, things couldn't possibly get any stranger.





	1. A Bottle of Whiskey

**Author's Note:**

> It has absolutely been years since I worked with either the Van Helsing fandom or the Underworld fandom. However, the release of _Underworld: Blood Wars_ , as well as a never-ending love for Van Helsing and a conversation with [phoenixlark](http://archiveofourown.org/users/phoenixlark/pseuds/phoenixlark) inspired me to start writing this and post it here.
> 
> Title inspired by _The Evil Garden_ by Edward Gorey

“Sir?”

Van Helsing lifted his head, trying to ignore the fact that the room spun slightly when he did. A barmaid hovered nervously just out of reach, a bottle in her hands. He didn’t blame her for being hesitant to approach. He knew he looked like a less; his hair was a tangle that needed a trim – or, at least, a brush – and his usual stubble had grown out into a four-day beard. He’d been in his cups since arriving in Budapest four days ago, and personal grooming had gone by the wayside.

“You can just…leave the bottle,” he informed the girl. “Less work for the both of us.”

She took a few nervous steps forward, setting the bottle on the edge of the table and then hastily retreating. He sighed, uncorking the bottle and filling his glass with a hand that was trembling. It was low-quality whiskey, but it got him drunk enough to take the edge off and to make him sleep dreamlessly at night.

The bottle would be enough to keep him busy until last call. After that, he’d stagger upstairs and sleep. Hopefully, by that time, Carl would be asleep. Wouldn’t have to see the great Van Helsing completely trashed again. Wouldn’t feel the need to have to play unwilling nursemaid, plying Van Helsing with cups of water, holding him up while he relieved himself, so he wouldn’t end up face-first in chamber pot.

Of course, that was really nothing less than what he deserved, he felt, ending up face down in his own piss. He deserved it for spending the past four nights getting drunk, for drinking so much that first night that he spent the next day bedridden with a hangover, vomiting constantly and blaspheming enough for a week’s worth of hail Marys. For turning Carl, his last friend in his miserable life, into his nanny on what was supposed to be an assignment.

But God, he just wanted to sleep without dreaming of _her_.

She had haunted his dreams for two years now – at least, she did on the nights where he wasn’t too drunk to dream, or the ones where he wasn’t wandering the Vatican like a melancholy ghost because he simply couldn’t sleep. And ever since Cardinal Jinette had given him his new assignment – something about packs of werewolves lingering around Budapest, but thanks to the whiskey, he couldn’t recall the specifics – and sent him on his way with Carl to serve as his whatever-it-was-that-Carl-did, the dreams of her had been getting worse. He closed his eyes, scrubbing a hand over his face. It had been taking more and more whiskey just to get him to a dreamless sleep.

“At it again, I see.”

He sighed, biting back a curse and opening his eyes. Carl had slipped into the seat across the table from him and was eyeing the bottle of whiskey. Carl’s dirty blond hair, which was untidy to begin with, was now very rumpled, even sticking straight up in some spots, as though he had been raking his hands through it. Though Carl had always seemed inexhaustible, full of the endless energy that was a result of his constantly-busy mind, Van Helsing noticed that his friar companion looked… _tired_.

That made him feel guilty. No doubt, Carl had been running himself ragged, between caring for Van Helsing’s drunk self and sending regular, probably falsified reports back to Rome to keep Cardinal Jinette satisfied about their progress in Budapest.

“Come to lecture me?” he grunted to Carl.

“No,” Carl said, turning over the bottle and reading the flimsy paper label on it. “Merely came to make sure you aren’t too drunk to walk yet. I don’t know if I can handle dragging you up the stairs. Again.”

Van Helsing winced slightly. That had been Paris, a year to the day since he had lost Anna. After cleaning out a particularly nasty clutch of goblins, he’d gone to the place they’d been staying at in the Latin Quarter. His intention had been just to have one glass of absinthe, to remember the rain, the bitter taste of wormwood at the back of his throat, and Anna’s smile when she told him that the potent green beverage would knock him on his ass.

Turns out, she hadn’t been lying about that part.

Three-quarters of a bottle later, he was actually slumped across two chairs, the almost empty bottle clutched in the crook of his elbow and Anna’s name on his lips. He had passed out with less than three fingers of absinthe left in the bottle, and had woken up in his and Carl’s narrow attic room with no idea how he’d gotten there. He’d only found out later that Carl had, quite literally, dragged him up three flights of stairs by the back of his coat – mostly at the insistence of the hotel’s proprietor, who had recognized Van Helsing’s face and had mentioned to Carl that men with yellow eyes and pointed teeth tended to skulk the quarter at that hour, and would like nothing better than to have a go at a legendary monster hunter whose guard was down.

“You should have just left me down there that night,” Van Helsing grumbled.

“And let you get eaten by a werewolf? I’ve never be able to explain that to the Cardinal.”

That got a small smile out of Van Helsing, and he was thankful to Carl for it – it really was the first reason he’d had to smile since they’d reached Budapest.

“He might be relieved,” Van Helsing said. “I don’t think the Cardinal cares that much for me. He certainly doesn’t care _about_ me.”

Those words hung heavily in the air between him and Carl. For years, Van Helsing had had no illusions that Cardinal Jinette cared more about the Order’s holy crusade against Earth’s monsters more than he did about Van Helsing. He knew he was the Order’s glorified trash collector – it wasn’t glamorous, and it was far from ideal, but it was a far better option than being in the gutters of Rome, homeless, friendless, and with no memory of himself.

And then, Transylvania happened. Dracula happened, and Anna Valerious had walked into his life, had gone toe-to-toe with him to protect her people and save her family. Had loved him, the monster hunter, the man who had become that which he had hunted. Who had risked her life, who had taken on a bride of Dracula, to get him the cure that would remove the curse from him.

And he killed her.

He had tried to stay strong on his and Carl’s return home, after Anna’s funeral. He comforted himself with what he had witnessed there, on the coast of the Adriatic Sea – of Anna reuniting with her family, of nine generations of Valeriouses finally making their way into Heaven. Anna was safe, beyond the cruelties of the world. Her family was free from their curse, able to enter the gates of Saint Peter. He let that be a small light that warmed and brightened his sorrow-shrouded soul.

It had taken Cardinal Jinette only five minutes to snuff that light out.

He had knelt in the confessional at the Vatican upon his return, beseeching the Cardinal for forgiveness. In what was perhaps his most honest, most passionate confession in his eight years with the Order, he had told Cardinal Jinette everything: Being turned into a werewolf, discovering Dracula’s weakness and the cure for Van Helsing’s condition, how he had defeated Dracula as a werewolf, and finally, the most painful part: How, trapped in a werewolf’s blind fury, he had killed Anna as she delivered the cure that saved him from his fate.

The Cardinal had listened to this story, as emotionless and unmovable as a statue. At the end of the confession, he had merely sighed and stood, opening the secret passage behind the confessional that led down into the headquarters of the Order.

“It is a shame, about the princess,” he had drawled as he had started down the stairs. “At least she died after you had dealt with Dracula. It would have been rather… _unfortunate_ if you had accidentally damned her and nine generations of her family.”

Something in the hunter’s emotional center had broken that day, as Cardinal Jinette had brushed off the death of the woman he loved, the woman who had sacrificed everything to save the world from a terrible monster.

Two years later, it still hadn’t healed.

Carl sighed, raking a hand through his hair. Van Helsing pursed his lips. He knew he’d put Carl in a tight spot – much as he disliked the Cardinal, the man was, in fact, Carl’s superior.

“I’m sorry, Carl.”

“The Cardinal is a complicated man,” Carl said. “He’s been in the business for a long time…long enough, I’m afraid, that he’s lost sight of the personal aspect of this job. He wants the job done, but I do think that he sometimes loses sight of the toll doing this job takes on the hunters.”

Van Helsing nodded, reaching for the bottle of whiskey, which Carl still held. Carl, however, twitched it out of his reach, grimacing at the label.

“This swill is going to rot a hole in your stomach,” the friar chided lightly. “And I’m afraid that’s beyond my capabilities to fix. I’m not a miracle worker, you know.”

“No,” Van Helsing agreed. “But…you’re a good friend. Far better than I deserve.”

“Oh, don’t say that,” Carl said, shaking his head. “You’re a fine man, Van Helsing. Any man would be honored to be your friend.”

Van Helsing raised an eyebrow in disbelief, eyes flickering from Carl to the bottle of whiskey he still held, and then, back to Carl.

Carl shrugged. “You’ve lost your way a little. That doesn’t make you a bad person. It makes you _human_. I’m still honored to be considered a friend of yours. And to call you my friend as well.”

Van Helsing’s jaw clenched slightly, but he nodded. In some things, there was no use in arguing with Carl, and this was one of them.

He was glad Carl considered it an honor to be his friend, and that Carl called him a friend, as well. He just wished he felt more worthy of the title.

It was getting late. The tavern was starting to empty out, and the girls who had been serving were now coming around, collecting steins, glasses, and bottles. Carl and Van Helsing both watched the process unfolding; one girl came around collecting bottles, another coming behind her, collecting glasses. A third girl disappeared out the front door with a bucket, likely to go draw water from a nearby spout. Carl looked down at the bottle in his hand, then up at Van Helsing with a bit of a grin.

“Well…no sense in letting it go to waste.”

Without further ado, Carl then raised the bottle to his lips and drank at least two shotglasses’ worth of the so-called swill in one go. He lowered the bottle, smacking his lips against the bite of the whiskey.

“Mmm. That will _definitely_ rot a hole right through you.”

“I thought monks weren’t supposed to drink?” Van Helsing asked drily, giving Carl a look.

“Still just a friar,” Carl reminded him.

“It’s probably for the best. Drinking, cursing, bedding barmaids…you’d be a terrible monk.”

Carl stared at him, silent for a long moment, and Van Helsing worried that he’d perhaps gone a little too far with the joke. But then, Carl let out a great guffaw of a laugh, face lighting up, a trace of that usual inexhaustible energy coming back.

“Oh mercy, you’re right,” Carl chuckled. “Oh, I’d be an absolutely terrible monk, can you imagine?”

He kept laughing, and, slowly, Van Helsing started to smile. And then, as Carl began reciting a Mass in overexaggerated, droning Latin in between sips of whiskey, he actually started to laugh – the first real laugh he could remember having in a long time.

An ugly scream split the night outside.


	2. Uncanny Beasts

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Van Helsing gets a little help when outnumbered by werewolves.

The chair clattered to the floor as Van Helsing stood, every nerve alive and on end as the scream split the night, clearing the creeping fog in his brain. The screamer was female, and whoever they were, they were outside, but close by. A horrible sinking feeling – one that had nothing to do with the cheap whiskey – filled his gut. He had little doubt that the barmaid who had just gone outside was the one who was screaming.

Carl’s eyes went wide, and he looked to Van Helsing. “What was that?”

Van Helsing went for his revolvers, one at each hip. A quick spin on the barrels chambered a round in each gun, and he cocked the hammers with one terse word to Carl:

“Trouble.”

He sprinted for the doors of the tavern, past the other two barmaids, who practically dove out of the way at the sight of him, revolvers gleaming and ready for battle. He slammed through the door shoulder-first, then brought his right arm out, his revolver acting as his lead. The screaming had stopped as he left the tavern, but now, he could hear another sound: Snarling, as though a large and vicious pack of dogs were nearby. It was coming from the alley next to the building. With careful, measured steps, Van Helsing crept up to the alley, then rounded the corner…

The barmaid was on the ground, back against the wall. Her golden hair, which had been up in a knot, was now loose around her shoulders, and her dress had been torn and was smeared with mud from a recent rainstorm. She trembled violently, eyes fixed on a mass of seething shadows that snarled, dribbling ropes of drool onto her dress.

A werewolf.

No, not just one. Three werewolves, gathering around the young woman, all snarling and drooling and looking at her like she was a scrap of meat they intended to fight over. One leaned forward and snapped at her; with no place to go, her only course of action was to recoil, and the werewolf’s jaw missed her by maybe an inch. She looked to Van Helsing, eyes wide with panic and her gaze pleading for help.

A light breeze blew through the alley, now putting him upwind of the werewolves. As soon as his scent even drifted towards them, they had all turned to him, as if they no longer considered the girl to be worthy prey. He steadied his hand, putting a werewolf into his sights, waiting to see what the beasts would do.

What had even brought them there in the first place? Though the area of Budapest he was in was more than a little rundown, it was a far cry from the usual places he’d seen werewolves – mostly in the outskirts of rural villages, or in the isolation of the woods. Something must have been very tempting in order to draw them into the city.

The first werewolf crouched, ready to strike. Van Helsing crouched slightly, too, mimicking the werewolf’s stance; despite the fact that his time as a werewolf had been brief, there were still instincts that lingered, flashes of muscle memory that tried to overtake his body at times. However, those instincts also made it easier to predict the moves of werewolves, what they were going to do.

This one was going to strike.

_Bang! Bang!_

The werewolf leapt at the same time that Van Helsing fired two shots. The first went wild, but the second hit the werewolf’s hairy arm. The beast howled in pain, its long, arm-like forelimb giving out as the entire weight of the beast came to bear. The werewolf tumbled end-over-end once, twice, propelled by the momentum of its leap and subsequent crash, and Van Helsing jumped out of the way to avoid being bowled over by the injured by very much alive werewolf. Finally, the werewolf came to a stop and lay there, whimpering and licking at its wound. Steam rose from the bullet hole, meaning that the silver bullet he had fired was doing its work.

One out of the way…that left him with two werewolves who were very alive and now, very angry.

Another one lunged, smaller and more lightly built than the first one. A female, if he had to guess. She snapped angrily at him, yellowed fangs gleaming. He fired a shot, but she ducked out of the way at the last minute, then rushed him. The force of her slamming into Van Helsing sent them both tumbling to the ground. She roared in his face, blood-hot breath smelling of rotting meat. Van Helsing jammed his arm into her mouth, using it to lever her jaws open and try to avoid getting his entire face ripped off. His revolver was still in his hands, and the muzzle was now jammed against the roof of the werewolf’s mouth. She attempted to stand, but Van Helsing quickly wrapped his legs around the werewolf’s neck, attempting to use his own weight to counterbalance the two of them and keep the werewolf down. One quick pull of the trigger would end the fight, but the werewolf’s slobbery mouth made it hard to get a good grip on the trigger, and his arm strained at the effort of holding the massive jaws open and trying to keep from being bitten

“Help me!”

The barmaid’s terrified scream grabbed his attention. The remaining werewolf held her aloft, one massive hand around her throat. Her feet dangled uselessly, and she clawed at the werewolf’s hand, to no avail. She locked eyes with Van Helsing, her own wide and desperate.

“Please…help!”

The werewolf holding her followed her gaze to where Van Helsing lay on the ground, tangled up with the female werewolf. The other werewolf snarled softly at him, but he swore there was something in the snarl that almost looked like a smile. A sick feeling washed over Van Helsing. There was something in the werewolf’s eye that he didn’t trust.

“Don’t – !”

The werewolf sunk his fangs into the space where the young girl’s neck met her shoulder. She didn’t scream, but instead let out some horrible, choked sound, her fingers losing their grip on the werewolf’s massive hand.

_Bang!_

A bullet tore through the female werewolf’s skull, splattering Van Helsing with blood and horrible bits of what looked like brain. The werewolf was dead even before her entire weight came down on Van Helsing.

The other werewolf dropped the barmaid, turning to roar at Van Helsing with a mouth full of bloodied fangs. From behind him, another roar echoed; still stuck under the dead werewolf, he had to crane his neck back, and when he did, he found that the first werewolf had recovered from its injury with enough time to watch Van Helsing kill its companion.

And now, he was trapped between two very angry werewolves.

“Fuck!” He pushed and shoved at the werewolf carcass, twisting to try to free himself from the dead weight of it. The second werewolf closed in on him, and, as he squirmed, his clawed hand grabbed him by the front of his vest, yanking him from under the dead werewolf. His revolver slipped out of his blood-slick hand, clattering to the ground. He had just enough time to notice that she was looking distinctly more human before he was half-thrown, half-slammed to the ground between the two werewolves. He raised his revolver, but one of the werewolves knocked it out of his grasp with a careless swipe of a massive, hairy paw.

_BANG!_

The first werewolf teetered dangerously over Van Helsing. He rolled to the side as the werewolf collapsed, blood oozing from a bullet hole right between his eyes. The redness quickly seeped into the spaces between the alley’s cobblestones.

Van Helsing looked up, away from the dead werewolf. Had Carl decided to follow him out? Had he seen Van Helsing in trouble and gone for the hunter’s abandoned revolver? He opened his mouth, torn between thanking Carl and warning him about the third werewolf – who, for the second or so of silence after the first werewolf fell dead, seemed as stunned as Van Helsing.

But it was not Carl who stood at the mouth of the alley.

A woman stood there, her dark hair and clothing making her little more than a shadow. A still-smoking revolver was pointed at the last remaining werewolf, who gazed unblinkingly at her.

The whole alley was now very still and very, very silent, as though everyone present was now holding a collective breath, waiting to see who would move first. Even the injured barmaid had stopped whimpering, and was now watching the situation with teary eyes.

The werewolf sprang – not forward, towards the newcomer, but upwards, over the injured barmaid, sinking his claws into the side of the building about ten feet off the ground. The woman sprang forward after him, pulling another revolver from a holster at her waist, taking aim at the fleeing werewolf.

_Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang! Bang…click! Click Click!_

The werewolf had disappeared over the edge of the roof, with nothing to show for it except a line of crumbling brick that was now pebbled with bullet holes. The woman hissed in displeasure, jamming one revolver back into a holster while opening the chamber of the other to refill it.

Van Helsing slowly got to his feet, glancing towards his own dropped weapon. While the newcomer may have helped him get rid of the werewolf, he knew there was a distinct possibility she could turn her guns on him, and he felt very uncomfortable without his own revolvers.

The barmaid whimpered. The woman stiffened, turning her attention to the barmaid. There was another long moment where no one moved, everyone trying to calculate the moves of the next person…and then, the woman took a step towards the injured barmaid, fingers resting on the triggers of her guns and a hard, unyielding expression on her face. A nasty feeling in Van Helsing’s gut told him that this woman, whoever she was, had no intention of letting the barmaid leave the alley alive.

“No!”

The woman stopped, turning to face him. All the breath left him suddenly, as though he’d been punched in the gut. He knew he had never met this woman before, but he knew he had seen her face before in a beautiful, headstrong young woman he had once loved. And while he knew they were not the same woman, knew this was not the woman he have loved and lost, a single word wheezed out of him before he could stop himself.

“ _Anna…_ ”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Come visit me on Tumblr!](http://mllecomtessedelafere.tumblr.com)


	3. Déjà Vu

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Selene has seen this man before. His is the most infamous face in Europe.

Selene had been about two streets over from a particularly shitty-looking dive of a tavern when the screaming started.

Unsurprisingly, it was coming from the direction she’d just come in. She cursed herself for a fool; she knew she had smelt something wrong over there, and she’d just walked past, ignoring her sense of smell in favor of actually trying to see one of the beasts she’d been tailing, trying to catch one of them doing something, be it chowing down on human flesh or howling from the rooftops at the full moon that hung in the sky. Now, there was legitimate trouble happening, and she was two blocks away.

She spun on her heels, taking off as fast as she could. The streets were mostly empty at this late hour, and ducking into alleys and around corners kept her from being spotted by any wandering drunks or streetwalkers. And even still, most people would have merely dismissed her as a shadow on a breeze, or a figment of their imagination, before they would see or realize what she really was.

Vampire.

By the time she reached the alley, one werewolf was already dead, and the other two were furious about that fact. One held a tiny slip of a mortal barmaid aloft, a giant, oozing bite on her neck and blood on its teeth. The other had its back to her, and was ready to charge at whatever or whoever had killed its companion.

A bullet through its skull stopped that.

The third werewolf, with two companions down, and clearly having more brains than balls, took off, dropping the barmaid and scaling the building, somehow successfully evading all the bullets she fired at it. By the time she was out of ammunition, it had fled over the rooftops and out into the darkness of the city beyond. Even its atrocious smell barely lingered, carried away in the night’s breeze.

She cursed about that, too.

The barmaid lay on the ground at the base of the wall, a bleeding mess in the most literal sense of the word. The girl was alive…but she’d been bitten. There was a very small chance her body would accept the virus carried in the lycan’s saliva, turning her into the very creature she’d been attacked by. There was also a significantly larger chance that her body would reject the virus, and she would die a horrible, painful death.

Either way, her fate had been sealed.

With a fully-reloaded gun, Selene approached the whimpering barmaid, who was clutching at her injured shoulder. She looked up at her with big, teary eyes, and for a moment, Selene saw herself in that girl – young, scared, mortal and vulnerable, attacked by brutish creatures who had destroyed her life without a second thought.

But Selene had been different from this girl. She had not been bitten. Viktor saved her from a fate as a filthy lycan.

This barmaid, whoever she was, was not so lucky.

“No!”

She’d forgotten there was someone else in the alley with her. Someone who had killed one of the werewolves first. Lowering her revolver slightly – but still keeping it in her hands – she turned to face whoever had spoken to her, ignoring the barmaid for a second.

A man had gotten to his feet, his clothing and face splattered with blood and lycan brains. He was tall, well over six feet, and broad-shouldered, with a wild tangle of dark hair that brushed his shoulders, and several days’ worth of unshaved beard carpeting his chin and jaw. As soon as his eyes landed on her, all the color drained from his face. His bloodshot eyes went wide, and his mouth dropped open. A single word escaped his lips.

“ _Anna…_ ”

“Who?” she asked, brow furrowed. Whoever he was, he thought she was someone completely different. He’d said that name in a reverent whisper, as though he couldn’t believe who he was seeing. But what he might do next, she had no way to predict. She raised her revolver again, finger hovering over the trigger, not wanting to take any chances. Despite the fact that he smelled almost completely human – but not quite, something was off – there was a possibility he was one of the older, stronger lycans, ones that could change their shape at will, ones for whom the moon held no sway. She’d only met three of them; one of them, she’d had the pleasure of putting a bullet through his skull. The other two, well…they were the reason she was back in Budapest in the first place.

As soon as she opened her mouth and spoke, however, the man snapped out of his reverie, raising his own revolver. He stepped to the side, inching towards the injured barmaid; she copied his action, stepping to the side, the two of them rotating in a circle, until he stood in front of the young lady.

“You won’t,” he said.

“She can’t leave this alley alive,” Selene said.

“She was attacked,” the man countered. “She needs help.”

“She needs to be put down.”

“ _She needs the cure!_ ”

“ _There is no cure!_ ”

“Please…” the barmaid begged, from her spot behind the man. “Please, please don’t hurt me…please…oh God…oh God it hurts…” She clutched her injured shoulder, tears leaving tracks down her bloodied face. “Please, make it stop, it hurts…”

“If you want her,” the man said, “you’ll have to shoot me.”

“Shooting you will solve nothing,” Selene told him. “Get out of the way. I’ll do it.”

“No!” He cocked his revolver.

Selene cocked hers, finger resting lightly on the trigger. If he was a werewolf, the silver bullets in her gun would kill him – if she got a perfect headshot. If she didn’t, well, it would certainly slow him down. But if he was human…well, he might live, but he would certainly be pissed, and Selene would find herself in a world of trouble. She was not scared of humans – humans were weak, superstitious creatures, and her own days of humanity were so far gone, she felt as if she’d never really been one of them to begin with. But Viktor cautioned against inciting the wrath of the humans. He’d lost many good soldiers – and even his own wife – to hordes of angry humans who happened to get in lucky shots.

“Van Helsing?”

A man’s nervous voice broke the tension. Turning her head towards the noise, Selene found a blond-haired man standing at the end of the alley, watching the scene with wide eyes. He was clothed in a well-worn friar’s robe, and an impossibly full bag was slung over one shoulder, tilting his weight to one side and making him walk like a hunchback. He looked back and forth between Selene and the dark-haired man…the one he had addressed…the one he had called Van Helsing.

Van Helsing…

An image flashed in Selene’s mind, of posters she had seen papered around the city. She’d stopped and torn one off a wall, studied the ruggedly-sketched face on the poster, and read the very large print with, at the time, little interest.

_Van Helsing_ , the poster had read. _Halott vagy élve akarta._

_Wanted dead or alive_.

Word had made it to Budapest many times over about the man. The humans saw him as a mass-murderer, but Selene knew better, the entire coven knew better. Van Helsing was a legend among their kind, both famous and infamous for his line of work – and his exceptionally high kill rate. Word had come from the east about two years ago that he’d taken out a very old and powerful vampire, one who called himself Dracula – he was a member of no coven, but word had it he had a very large and loyal nest in the heart of Budapest’s wealthiest district, until Van Helsing and his crazy religious companion had flushed them out.

“V-Van Helsing..?” the smaller robed man asked. That must have been the religious companion she’d heard tell of, but he hardly seemed intimidating enough to help take out an entire nest of vampires. In fact, he rather looked like a good snack for them.

“I see her, Carl,” Van Helsing said, his keen hazel eyes not leaving Selene. It was almost like standing off against a lycan – one wrong move, and she could very well not make it out alive.

“P-P-Please, help…” the barmaid sobbed weakly from behind Van Helsing.

Right. Selene had never taken care of that issue. She had a nasty, sinking feeling in her gut that the young woman’s body was going to take to the virus; most people who did not take to it started showing a failure in bodily systems by now.

“Carl, get the girl,” Van Helsing instructed.

The blond-haired man – Carl – nodded and carefully inched forward, watchful of Selene’s gun. She wasn’t terribly concerned about him, though. He wasn’t the threat. Van Helsing was.

“You’re making a mistake,” she warned him, deadly soft.

“I will not allow the life of an innocent to be taken,” he said.

“She’s not an innocent,” Selene warned. “Not anymore.”

This wasn’t going to be an easy end. Not with Van Helsing so adamant to defend the bitten barmaid. And with the hunter’s skill and infamous nature, she could end up just as dead as the two lycans on the ground. There was only one course of action left, and while she was entirely opposed to it, it was the most logical one left, especially in the matter of self-preservation.

She crouched, then sprang forward. Van Helsing followed her, firing another shot; fortunately, it merely pierced the fabric of her greatcoat, missing her entirely. She took another leap, then sprang over the heads of Carl and the barmaid, digging her fingers into gaps in the brickwork wall behind them and scaling it to the top, much as the escaped lycan had. She heard the hammer of Van Helsing’s revolved spin, a gunshot, and a chunk of brick inches from her right hand exploded into a cloud of red dust. She climbed faster, shimmying over the edge of the roof and taking off across the uneven rooftops, not stopping until she was a good three blocks away. While she knew Van Helsing would not be able to match her speed, she didn’t want to take any chances.

It was only when she finally stopped, scaling down a drainpipe to come back to street level, that she cursed herself for a fool again. She could have easily stood up to the likes of Van Helsing. She could have snapped his neck with a simple flex of her fingers, and deprived the human world of its greatest, most hated protector.

But…at the same time, Van Helsing was different from the other mortals she’d tangled with. Most were scared to death by the very idea of her and her kind; though humans grew in sophistication with each passing century, and pretended they were no longer scared of the creatures that walked in the night, at the heart, they were all still the same superstitious peasants they had been for centuries. Even the few so-called “vampire hunters” Selene had had the misfortune of encountering were really little more than misguided humans, who thought they could ward her off with blessed water and muttered prayers, or who tried to repel her with religious objects and cloves of garlic.

Van Helsing, however, would have known that those things didn’t work. Would have really known how to kill a vampire, even one with her age and experience. Would have known to cut off her head, or burn her with fire. After all, he was one of the greatest monster hunters in all the world – even if they wanted only to see him as a murderer, because seeing what he really did meant believing in creatures they no longer wished to believe in. His reputation couldn’t – and didn’t – come without years of experience.

Speaking of the Devil…there was another wanted poster haphazardly pasted to the side wall of the house across from where Selene stood. She marched across the street, studying the poster and the rough sketch of the man she’d just encountered, and then, with only a cursory glance around to make sure she wasn’t being watched, tore the poster off the wall, rolling it up and tucking it into her coat, tight against the side of her body. Her horse, she knew, was tethered at an inn on the outskirts of the city – and dawn was approaching soon, giving her only a few hours to make the breakneck ride back to Ordoghaz.

_Someone’s got to warn Viktor that we’ve got company!_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks to everyone who came back to read the new chapter despite my absurdly long stretches between posting. 
> 
> [Come hang out with me on Tumblr.](http://mllecomtessedelafere.tumblr.com)


	4. Haunted by a Memory

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Whoever or whatever she is, Van Helsing cannot get the mysterious woman out of his head...

Van Helsing stood at the base of the wall the woman had just escaped up, frozen in a moment of indecision – a rare thing indeed. The woman, she wasn’t human; that speed, the ease with which she had scaled the wall, none of that was human at all. She was some kind of creature, though exactly what, he couldn’t quite say.

But more than just the woman’s supernatural nature…she looked so much like Anna that it had struck a chord with him, deep inside. There were differences, of course – her hair was clipped much shorter than Anna’s, and straight where the princess had had a head full of curls. And the woman was so deathly pale, she almost looked like…well, a ghost.

If she ran as fast as she climbed, she was probably blocks away. He was sure he could pick up on some trace of her and track her, but…then what? What did he do when he caught her…if he even could catch her?

“Van Helsing?”

He looked at Carl, who had come up next to him.

“You saw her too, right?” he asked softly, wondering if his mind, in its inebriated state, was just playing tricks on him – if that woman wasn’t really a doppelganger for his lost princess, if he only saw her from some deep-seated desire to see Anna again.

Carl opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but closed it, shook his head for a moment, and then opened it to speak again.

“We have to help her,” he said.

“Who?” He followed Carl’s pointing finger, and found him gesturing to the barmaid, who was still slumped against the wall, blood drying on her dress, looking up at him with wide and terrified eyes. She expected him to shoot her, as well. “Right. Carl, do you have your kit with you?”

Among other things, Carl was a surprisingly deft hand at doctoring. It was probably as a result of almost a decade of cleaning up after Van Helsing’s encounters, of stitching together torn flesh and cleaning out wounds before they became infected. In fact, Carl had even managed to assemble a decent doctor’s kit with items he’d sent Van Helsing to grab from the infirmary – because while drinking, cursing, and sexual relations were all okay for friars, Carl found stealing to be crossing a line.

Carl nodded. “It’s upstairs, in the room.”

“Then let’s take her there.” Van Helsing turned to the barmaid, taking a step towards her.

She scrambled back as best as she could with her injured shoulder, eyes wide with fear. “S-Stay back!”

“Hey.” He holstered his revolvers, then held up his hands. “Hey. I’m not going to hurt you. We want to help you. Okay?”

“H-Help?”

He nodded. “Help. My friend – ” He gestured to Carl. “– can help you. You have to trust me, though. Do you think you can do that?”

She looked back and forth between Carl and Van Helsing. He was pretty sure that he didn’t look particularly trustworthy; as if his disheveled state hadn’t been enough before, he was now disheveled, bloodied, and covered in werewolf brains. Carl, at least, looked a little more friendly, even if he, too, had seen better days.

There must have been something in the both of them, however, that the barmaid decided she trusted, for she nodded, and allowed Van Helsing to approach her and gently help her back up to her feet. As soon as her feet touched the ground, however, her knees crumpled, and only the hunter’s reflexes kept her from falling to the ground.

“She’s lost a lot of blood,” Carl said. “She’s likely unsteady on her feet.”

Van Helsing nodded, then scooped the young lady up, striding past Carl and back around the corner, into the bar. The two other barmaids were still in there, though the room was now dark, all the lanterns doused except for one behind the bar. They both were speaking in whispers when Van Helsing burst through the front door, carrying their friend, with Carl following on his heels.

“We need water,” Van Helsing demanded to the women, “and clean towels, or linens, or…something. Can you do that?”

They looked warily at the injured barmaid in Van Helsing’s arm, their eyes widening at the sight of her ravaged shoulder.

“ _Vârcolac_ ,” one of them, a taller woman with dark-brown hair, murmured, shaking her head as she looked back and forth between her injured companion and the other girl who had stayed behind in the bar.

_Vârcolac_. Werewolf. They knew what had attacked them. The girl whimpered in Van Helsing’s arms, and her skin was hot to the touch. He felt a twinge of sympathy for her – he knew the pain she was in right now, remembered the pain of werewolf fangs ripping into flesh, remembered the searing pain as his body changed into something completely different. Even as his body adjusted to the werewolf venom, he would still have twinges of intense pain as the venom made itself known, as the werewolf side started to rear its ugly head.

“Please, we’re trying to help her,” Van Helsing told them.

“Just…take her to the room” Carl instructed, stepping forward and heading for the bar. “I’ll get what we need.”

Van Helsing nodded, then headed for the narrow staircase that led upstairs, to a rickety hall full of bedrooms. They were three doors down and on the right; thankfully, Carl had left the door unlocked, so he could just kick it open instead of trying to hunt down a key he may or may not have had. He set the girl down onto one of the two narrow beds, then knelt down next to it. She sat up, pushing into the corner of the bed, staring at him with untrusting eyes.

“I know,” he said, putting his hands up in a gesture of surrender. “I just want to look. My companion, he’ll help fix it.”

The girl nodded warily, and Van Helsing reached out, peeling at the blood-soaked fabric of her dress. Tufts of fibers remained stuck in the wound, and he couldn’t help but wince at the sight of it. The wound he’d received from Velkan hadn’t looked nearly as bad as this one – a gaping, ragged-edged circle made from crooked werewolf teeth, almost the size of the girl’s entire shoulder. The bleeding had stopped, and the blood on her skin was beginning to crust and peel off in red-brown flakes, but her skin was fever-hot under his touch.

“I’ve got it,” Carl said, pushing into the room, towels draped over both arms, precariously balancing a very full bowl of water in his hands. “Van Helsing, could you…ah…whoa!”

“Here.” He stood up and took the bowl from Carl, setting it on the little nightstand between the two beds. As an afterthought, he picked up the box of matches there and used one to light the stubby little candle, to give Carl some extra illumination to work by.

“Ah, thank you.” He sat on the bed, dipping a towel in some water and gently coaxing the girl over to him. She came a little less warily, and Van Helsing couldn’t blame her. Not only did Carl lack the unfortunate reputation that Van Helsing had, but he looked a lot less physically intimidating.

And so Van Helsing sat on the edge of the other bed and watched, as Carl cleaned and bandaged the wound on the girl’s shoulder. He tried to stitch it, but he’d hardly done more than stick the needle into her shoulder when she’d screamed loud enough to wake the dead, and he’d backed off, settling for just bandages instead. By the end of it, she’d barely done more than murmured her thanks in Hungarian before she slumped into the pillows, eyes fluttering closed.

There was still a bit of life in the stumpy candle on the night-table. Carl sighed as the barmaid drifted off, wiping his hands on a towel that was now more red than anything else.

“Well, this night didn’t quite go the way I thought it would,” he said.

“Carl,” Van Helsing started, slowly, thinking back to the question his companion had dodged in the alley, “did you see the same woman I saw tonight?”

There was a pregnant pause. Finally, Carl loosed a breath, setting aside the towel he was cleaning his hands on. “I did.”

“And..?”

“And?”

“She…” he faltered. Now, he wasn’t sure if he could say it out loud. It had been easy enough to think earlier, but out loud, to another person, it sounded completely crazy. And more than that, it made a tide of emotion swell up in him – the same emotions he’d been trying to drown in cheap whiskey since they’d gotten to Budapest.

“She looked like Anna,” Carl stated gently. “I know. I saw.”

“You thought so, too?”

“You’d have to be blind not to see the resemblance,” Carl said.

“Who was she?”

Carl shook his head. “I don’t know. But whoever she was, she wasn’t human.”

No, she wasn’t. Van Helsing had watched her scale the wall as though she were walking down the street. He’d suspected that she wasn’t human the moment he saw her in the alley, and her unusual escape had only confirmed it. He closed his eyes, thinking about her – her moon-pale skin, her keen, dark eyes, the glimpse of sharp teeth behind slightly-parted lips.

She was a vampire.

“She could be trouble,” Carl cautioned.

“Perhaps.” Van Helsing opened his eyes. “We don’t even know if we’ll ever see her again.”

Carl pursed his lips, looking out their narrow, grimy little window. Beyond, the moon hung heavy in the sky, missing just a very small slice. It would only be another day or so before it was full – but despite the incompleteness of its cycle, there had still been full-fledged werewolves in that alley.

“Something tells me that this is not the last we’ll see of that young lady.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [Catch me on Tumblr, how about that?](http://mllecomtessedelafere.tumblr.com)
> 
> [I am a terrible person and should be smacked for that reference]

**Author's Note:**

> [Come chat me up on Tumblr!](http://mllecomtessedelafere.tumblr.com)


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